The use of fastening systems for securing the corners of disposable absorbent articles, such as diapers, is known. Such systems are used to provide a secure means for keeping such articles on the wearer during use. When such systems are refastenable, adjustments may be made during use to reposition the articles, to allow a caregiver to check for soiling, and may also be used to provide a secure means for keeping such articles and their soiled contents wrapped up after use until disposal.
A typical fastening system for use with absorbent articles may have a fastening tape and a landing member (also known as a landing zone). The fastening tape may be disposed directly or indirectly upon the longitudinal edge of the body portion in either the front or back of the absorbent article waist regions. In use, the fastening tape may be secured to the landing member, which is disposed upon the correspondingly opposite body portion of the front or back of the absorbent article. A refastenable system may be provided with, e.g., hooks on the fastening tape that releasably engage loops disposed on the landing member, or vice versa. To improve fit, the end of the fastening tape that does not engage the loops in the landing member area, may be attached to one end of an elastic/stretch member (ear), and the other end of the elastic/stretch member may be secured to the longitudinal edge of the body portion of the absorbent article.
Manufacturers of absorbent articles, e.g. diapers, typically employ mechanical assembly lines in which a variety of absorbent article components are fed into a linear process whereby each step builds upon the last one. Such assembly lines are often referred to as “converters”. As the partial absorbent article progresses towards the end of the converter, it becomes more complete, until at the end of the line, all the necessary parts have been provided and arranged as needed to yield a completely assembled absorbent article. The process is typically automated and may be controlled by various computer programs and/or human operators, as desired. In order to make the manufacture of absorbent articles economically viable, such converting lines must be capable of operating at high speeds with good repeatability and consistency between consecutive articles. Two elements that impact economic viability are the nature of the absorbent article components and how they will be attached to other components to form a completely assembled absorbent article, and the material cost of each absorbent article component.
The inventors have observed that conventional fastening tapes that are provided into the assembly line having already been coated with an adhesive prior to being provided to the line will typically be such that the adhesive covers all of the portion of the tape that is to overlap the ear to which the tape will be connected, and there is a certain cost associated with this arrangement. If the adhesive is applied continuously online, the adhesive's properties can change during line stops if there is a large physical gap between the adhesive application point and the usage point. Also, the adhesive may tend to contaminate the knives used to separate individual tapes from the incoming tape web. Additionally, an element of the cost is that a release tape is typically required to be used in combination with such an arrangement because adhesive is exposed. If a pressure-sensitive adhesive is to be applied online, additional expensive and space-consuming equipment may be required to deliver it onto the product in addition to the construction adhesive equipment typically present on converters for disposable articles.
Attempts to achieve good fit and/or to reduce manufacturing cost have been made previously; however, there is a need to improve over these. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,019,065 (Scripps) discloses a fastening tape that combines a mechanical mechanism, e.g. hook and loop, with an exposed adhesive that secures the tape tab to a body portion of an absorbent article to provide a side closure and also secures the absorbent article in its disposal configuration. The exposed adhesive is preferably a pressure-sensitive adhesive and a release tape may be employed to achieve releaseability. A similar fastening system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,053,028 (Zoia, et al.), wherein the use of a pressure-sensitive adhesive as the exposed adhesive and the use of a release tape are both overtly required. Further, WO 2012/129428A1 (Bogaerts, et al.) discloses a fastening tape having a patterned adhesive where certain regions of tape surface have adhesive present while others do not, in combination with a release tape.
Generally, the use of pressure-sensitive adhesives may either restrict the tape tab stock to be pre-manufactured and supplied to the converter on rolls or it may necessitate the installation of expensive and complicated adhesive dispensing equipment to augment the typical construction adhesives found on absorbent article converters. Generally, the presence of a release tape adds complexity and cost to the manufacturing process versus fastening systems that omit such a feature. As such, there is a need for fastening systems that provide improved fit to the wearers of absorbent articles and/or reduce the cost of manufacturing such articles.